


Haunted Shadows

by elf_owl



Category: Winx Club
Genre: Healing, M/M, Past Torture, Post-Betrayal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:27:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23796112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elf_owl/pseuds/elf_owl
Summary: He’d thought he’d gotten away. That he’d fought his way free from the shadows and finally found his way back to the light. But no one escapes Shadowhaunt. The shadows still have him firmly in their grasp. He sees them in the eyes of those around him, those whom he’d betrayed before he’d truly met them. He sees them in the mirror, etched into his skin and soul. He sees them in the air, in the earth, in the past, present, and future. Once he was a paladin, light and good personified. Now he is shattered. Light refracted in a broken mirror, fragmented by jagged shadows.It could have been anyone. The Imposter had fooled them all, tricked them into trusting him and letting down their guard even as it was raised against Darkar. It could have been anyone who fallen for his alluring charm and casual power, his enthralling strength and silver tongue. But it wasn’t anyone. It was him. It was he who had fallen for the Imposter’s trick. It was he who had betrayed the location of Pixie Village. He who had failed to see past the glittering illusion to the rotten core beneath. He was supposed to be a role model, someone for his students to look up to and learn from. Well, they’ll learn from his failures.
Relationships: Avalon/Palladium (Winx Club)
Comments: 39
Kudos: 41





	Haunted Shadows

_Darkness. Cold stone slick with dripping water and his own blood. Hard iron burning his wrists, his neck, his ankles. Sharp talons drawing runes of shadow and blood on his bared chest. Pain, burning him, branding him._

_“You belong to Lord Darkar now.”_

_Agony as something – his magic, his life, his soul – was torn out of him and fed to something else. Something dark._

He woke choking on a scream. No, he mustn’t scream. Mustn’t give the bastard the satisfaction. Mustn’t let him know that he was breaking. That he was broken.

Footsteps in the corridor. _Bloodstained talons on damp stone._ The creak of hinges. _The rattle of chains as his fever-wracked body shook uncontrollably._ New scars tightened and protested the heaving of his chest as he struggled for breath.

“Professor?”

_A voice dark and sinuous as shadow and flame._

“Professor!”

_Fire. Talons piercing his skin and igniting his blood to molten lava._

“Avalon!”

Icy hands brushed his burning skin and he jerked away. Then he was falling. An endless second of freefall before he hit something solid. Softer than stone but hard enough to drive the remaining breath from his chest and jar his new-healed bones. A burst of raw energy erupted from him, but his reserves were still depleted almost to the point of nonexistence. The blast could have been blocked by the greenest of practitioners and still the effort knocked him half back into the shadowy world of unconsciousness.

“Avalon, it’s okay. You’re safe.” The voice was female. Soothing. Pitched as though speaking to a wild animal.

Avalon. He was Avalon. _Darkar never called him Avalon. That name was reserved for the Imposter. The being that had stolen his name, his skin, his life, and become Avalon. What was left was nothing but a shell. Just another of Darkar’s pets._

“Avalon? Do you know where you are?” A gentle breeze chilled his sweat-covered skin and he was there again, in that realm of wet stone and cold shadows. “Avalon. Open your eyes. Look at me.” The voice was stern now. Though still calm and nonthreatening, it demanded obedience. He opened his eyes to more shadows. Shook his head. Blinked. Glimmers of light. _There is no light in Shadowhaunt._ Blinked again.

Sharp brown eyes, dark with concern, behind pointed glasses. Chin length brown hair. Familiar. There was a name, floating on the fringes of his memory, fighting its way through the debris of dream-memory.

“That’s it. Come back to us, now.”

White walls flickering into red-grey stone and back. Sweat poured from him, stinging in the myriad cuts and welts that covered his body. Oddly, it was those small pains that brought him back. Nothing Darkar inflicted would ever be so minuscule a hurt.

“Do you know where you are?”

White-painted walls, now streaked various shades of grey in the night’s pale light. A window showing pink and blue trimmed pale marble. Wisps of clouds floating past a waning moon. A gate like gossamer wings. Magic soaked into every stone and breath of air.

“Alfea.” The single word was rasped out in a voice like shattered glass. Avalon swallowed, throat feeling raw as though he’d been screaming. Had he been screaming? _Don’t scream you mustn’t scream._ He swallowed again, focusing on the tiny pricks of pain.

“That’s right. You’re here at Alfea. Safe.” The woman was a few feet away, just out of arms reach. She had knelt down, putting herself at his level. The floor. He was on the floor. He’d fallen from the bed. _Falling falling falling through the never-ending mist. Not even hoping for passage to another realm now. Just looking for escape, one way or another._ “Avalon?”

He raised a hand to his head, pressed fingers into lingering bruises, hoped the pain would banish the clinging memories. He tried to speak but all that came out was a dry cough.

“Here.” The woman offered a glass of water. Rather than approaching, she sent a tiny wave of magic to carry it to his side. Avalon hesitated but squelched the voices whispering of drugs and poisons. Those voices belonged to another time and place. He hoped. The tremor in his hands guaranteed half the water ended up soaking his already sweat-drenched clothing, but he managed to swallow enough to ease the burning of his throat.

“Th—” he coughed, then tried again. “Thank you.” A beam of moonlight illuminated the woman’s face. Familiar. The name was nearly close enough to be snatched from the depths of his fragmented mind, but still it eluded his grasping thoughts. “Miss…?”

She smiled, a small quirk of the lips that seemed out of place on her otherwise stern face. “Griselda. I’m Alfea’s Head of Discipline. You’re in the infirmary. Do you remember how you got here?”

Avalon frowned. Fragments of memory started to drift together, but he couldn’t make sense of time or place. _Thirst. A need for water so great his body craved it more than air. Struggling to put one foot in front of the other. A need to just keep walking, to get as far away as possible. Unable to stop because if he did, he would never rise again. Falling._

“I remember…falling. And walking through a forest.” _A voice. Three voices. Young and high pitched with concern._ “There was a girl. No, a group of them. She, they…helped me?” _Darkness. Almost as deep as Shadowhaunt. Deep enough to get lost in._ He shook his head. “I can’t remember.”

“Three of our students found you as you came out of the forest and collapsed. They brought you back to Alfea. You met briefly with our Headmistress before collapsing again.” He knew by the caution that had crept into her voice by the end that there was something she wasn’t telling him. Something important.

“What—” He bit back the rest of the question. _What did I tell her?_ If this really was Alfea, then he should be able to trust the people there. But then again, he only knew a fraction of what the Imposter had done. Would they know that he wasn’t the Imposter? What if it was still here? He dragged a hand through his disheveled hair, yanked it free when his fingers caught in a bird’s nest of tangles, used the pain to ground himself. “When was this?”

“Two days ago.” Sharp brown eyes regarded him, peeling back any remaining shields. “You’ve been asleep. We didn’t want to wake you, but things have changed.”

“Darkar.” Just saying the name threatened to send him back into the haunted shadows of his nightmares.

“Yes. The Headmistress wishes to speak with you if you are up to it.” Avalon felt that the end of that sentence was meant more in courtesy than sincerity. There was suspicion behind the veneer of kindness. And rightfully so.

“I will speak with her.” Shakily, he pushed himself to his knees, then to his feet, leaning against the bed for support. Thankfully, Griselda hadn’t offered to help, had spared him the embarrassment of him flinching from her touch and likely ending back up on the floor.

“Good. There’s a washroom through that door and some clean clothes are on the counter. I’ll let you get yourself cleaned up and then walk you to her office.” She nodded briskly then left the room. It didn’t escape his notice that she left the room’s door ajar, nor that she had taken position at its side, as though on guard. _Good. It is wise of them to be cautious._

Slowly, Avalon made his way to the washroom. He was forced to use the wall for support, the strength that had gotten him this far seeming to have deserted him at last. The sudden brightness of the automatic lights made him stagger, almost falling as he shielded his eyes. After so long in the constant dark of Shadowhaunt, even the dim light of the moon seemed like high noon. On instinct he reached for his magic to shield his eyes or dim the lights. The effort left him swaying and the lights remained as sun-bright as ever.

Swearing under his breath, he felt his way to the counter he had glimpsed in the brief moment of darkness before the lights had blinded him. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, they felt as though they were burning in their sockets as he quickly stripped off his sweat-soaked clothes. He opened one eye a sliver for the brief second needed to locate the sink and a towel. That was enough to set off a chain of explosions behind his eyes as he splashed water on his face and chest, doing his best to wash away the remnants of the nightmare. To wash away the memories. How he yearned for a shower, to be able to wash away the grime left by months of captivity. Yes, someone, he assumed the school nurse, had spelled away the mud and dried blood and who knows what else. But he still felt _dirty_. He doubted Griselda and the Headmistress would tolerate waiting the eon it would take him to actually feel clean again. If that were even possible.

Once dressed, hair untangled as best he could without a comb and tied in a rough knot, he felt his way back to the door. Blessedly the room itself was still dark, lit only by the stray moonbeams. He took a moment to lean against the wall, trying to catch his breath and clear the spears of white and black fire from his vision. His entire body _ached_ and tremors ran through it uncontrollably. He’d been healed. All of the major injuries and many of the minor ones. But magical healing could only do so much. The body remembered the ripped skin and broken bones, the burned flesh and separated joints. In Shadowhaunt acting weaker than he was had likely saved his life. Darker hadn’t wanted his pet to die too soon, not when he could still be of some use. But here? In the unknown? _No weakness._ He might be among allies here. He might be among enemies. Until he knew for sure which it was, he couldn’t afford to betray himself any more than he already had.

Avalon summoned up the image of the man he once had been. The paladin. Bright and strong, light unblemished by even a trace of shadow. Unbending. Undefeated. He didn’t think he could ever return to what, who he had been. But he could pretend. _Like wearing a mask_. He was used to masks. Had worn them often enough that the cloth or metal or magic felt as natural as his own skin. _Just another mask_.

His breathing slowed, steadied. The shaking in his limbs, if not entirely gone, faded enough to go unnoticed or at least be attributed to minor exhaustion. He straightened, took a measured step towards the door. Then another. Not favoring his recently healed leg or leaning on the walls for support. Slow and deliberate, as though he were simply not in a hurry. His face was calm, composed. No pain. No fear. No uncertainty. No sign of the bone-deep weariness that felt as though it would drag him to the grave.

He hesitated before the door. Without his magic, he could do nothing about his eyes except hope that the pain wouldn’t overwhelm him. Or that the light wouldn’t permanently damage his dark-accustomed eyes. The hallway seemed dark enough. This deep into the night, the only light was the moon and a small orb hovering beside Griselda as she waited. He took a deep breath. _No fear. No weakness._ And stepped out into the corridor. “Let us go, then.”

**Author's Note:**

> So. No idea how this will go. This is my first attempt at writing a fanfic - well, actual story fic.  
> This starts at the end of season 2 and will probably run through events at the end of season 3. The Winx themselves are only background characters and events from the show will likely be only referenced. This focuses on Avalon and Palladium and their healing.  
> It will not be a story written for children. So if characters (like the Winx) seem out of character, it's because I'm imagining how they might actually act/speak/react in (magical) reality as opposed to what's filtered for a children's show.  
> No outline of length or when (if?) it will be finished. We'll see where my brain decides to go with this.  
> Also, I'm crap at summaries.


End file.
